Category: Miscellaneous

Last week, Sencha announced details of ExtReact, a platform that enables React developers to create visually appealing, data-intensive web applications. ExtReact streamlines and simplifies the addition of impressive user interface components to SaaS applications by rendering available more than 115 user interface components. Developers can use ExtReact to manage keyboard navigation, focus management, layout and data management. ExtReact enables developers to quickly and efficiently create impressive user interface components such as customized menus, trees, tabs, grids, forms, calendars and data visualizations that are instantly compatible with a multitude of browsers and devices as illustrated below:

The availability of ExtReact enhances Sencha’s portfolio of tools for accelerating the development of data-intensive web applications. The company’s web application development platform empowers developers to focus on building their applications by taking advantage of Sencha’s pre-integrated, multi-valent library of UI components. Sencha’s multitude of platforms for designing, developing and testing components for web-based applications responds to the contemporary proliferation of data-intensive, web-based applications with rich data visualizations and aesthetically pleasing visual interfaces. ExtReact is expected to become generally available in Q2 of 2017.

On May 16, Crate.io announced the availability of CrateDB 2.0, an open source SQL database that specializes in IoT and machine data. The innovation of CrateDB consists in leveraging SQL to aggregate and perform real-time analytics on IoT and machine data instead of the NoSQL databases commonly used in the industry for related use cases. CrateDB’s ability to accommodate the ingestion of high velocity streams of data and to perform queries on rapidly changing datasets, with impressive levels of scalability and latency, allows developers to combine their familiarity with SQL alongside a solution specially designed for the unique needs of IoT and machine data applications. CrateDB 2.0 features clustering upgrades that deliver improved query performance by means of faster aggregations and new index structures. In addition, CrateDB 2.0 contains a bevy of SQL enhancements that give developers a greater range of options regarding joins, sub-selects and the renaming and re-indexing of tables. The Enterprise Edition of CrateDB 2.0 offers performance monitoring, enhanced security as well as the ability for end users to create user-defined functions. CrateDB 2.0’s clustering upgrades, SQL enhancements and enterprise-grade security and performance monitoring mark a new milestone in the platform’s evolution that testifies to its readiness to embrace enterprise-grade workloads that include sensor data, GPS data and the industrial internet more generally. Subsequent to news of its general availability in December 2016, Crate.io’s release of open source and enterprise-grade versions of CrateDB underscores the early traction the platform has received, with over 1.3 million downloads and 50 customers using Crate.io in production. With the IoT and machine data space gearing up for a rampant proliferation of devices and corresponding datasets in forthcoming years, expect Crate.io to continue building on its recent momentum, particularly as organizations look for scalable databases that allow organizations to leverage widely available skillsets in SQL.

The graphic below illustrates the platform’s Enterprise Edition user interface for monitoring the performance of clusters gives users real-time visibility into cluster performance with respect to the ingestion and transformation of IoT and machine data:

Datos IO recently announced the release of RecoverX 2.0, a data management platform designed for the cloud that enhances the ability of customers to deliver data protection solutions as well as workload migration functionality, operational monitoring and enterprise policy management. RecoverX 2.0 expands the purview of Datos IO’s backup and recovery solutions from non-relational databases to relational databases and deepens its support for cloud-based applications and datastores. At the core of Datos IO’s mission is a commitment to supporting the management of applications and data within private, public and hybrid cloud environments as noted below by Datos IO CEO Tarun Thakur:

We are delivering a solution that no one has before. Cloud data management is not about selling boxes, appliances, or proprietary filesystems. It’s also not about porting legacy backup software to the cloud. Cloud data management is about reinventing the control plane with cloud principles in mind – elasticity, application-centricity, and scale – because that’s what enables customers to manage, protect, mobilize, and harness the value of their data across all cloud boundaries.

Here, Thakur remarks on “reinventing the control plane with cloud principles in mind” to give organizations the elasticity and scalability of the cloud while protecting data and serving the need to transport workloads, applications and data across diverse infrastructures. For example, RecoverX 2.0 gives organizations the ability to migrate on-premise applications to the cloud, inclusive of applications that leverage relational databases as well as the non-relational databases which Datos IO has historically supported. Moreover, this release features data protection support for relational database-based applications that extends to Microsoft SQL server hosted in either a private or public cloud environment as well as distributions of Apache Hadoop. Furthermore, RecoverX 2.0 delivers enterprise policy management functionality that automates backup and recovery processes in addition to operational metrics that provide granular, proactive insight regarding data protection processes. RecoverX 2.0 consolidates the positioning of Datos IO in the cloud data management space with a two pronged focus on backup and recovery and workload migration that positions it strongly to support the needs of organizations embracing cloud adoption and particularly, hybrid cloud infrastructures.

Bonsai, an innovator in Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies, recently revealed details of the Bonsai Early Access Program that provides customers with training, consultative support and collaborative design and development for customer-specific AI applications. Bonsai absolves customers of the complexity specific to building AI apps using Google’s TensorFlow or APIs to platforms such as IBM Watson by using Inkling, a programming language that allows developers to create artificial intelligence models called BRAINs at a higher level of abstraction as compared to low-level machine learning libraries and code. The higher level of abstraction delivered by the Bonsai platform with respect to application development streamlines and simplifies the creation of artificial intelligence models and systems. The Bonsai Early Access Program intends to deepen customer engagement with a view toward optimizing the creation of artificial intelligence-based apps for industrial systems spanning use cases in segments such as supply chain, manufacturing, warehousing and business operations. Early Access Program members also have access to engineering and consulting resources customized to specific use cases, in addition to the opportunity to contribute to the company’s roadmap for product development.

In separate news, Bonsai also announced the finalization of $7.6M in funding that brings the total funding the company has raised to $13.6M. The additional funding was led by Microsoft Ventures and NEA, an existing investor, with additional participation from ABB Technology Ventures, Samsung NEXT and Siemens. The funding raise will be used to deepen relationships with customers as well as increase the pace of product development. Bonsai was founded in 2014 by Mark Hammond and Keen Browne with the vision of imbricating machine learning more broadly in contemporary hardware and software. The company’s AI platform represents a Platform as a Service for Artificial Intelligence in a contemporary-PaaS environment that has gravitated toward polyglot platforms that are agnostic to specific application purposes. Positioned as a niche PaaS player in the rapidly growing field of machine learning, Bonsai stands poised to take advantage of increasing contemporary interest in artificial intelligence by means of a platform that centralizes the development, deployment and ongoing operational management of AI-related applications.

OVH has finalized the acquisition of VMware vCloud Air’s business and specifically, vCloud Air customers, support team and data center and customer operations. VMware vCloud Air will now be branded “VMware vCloud Air Powered by OVH” and continue to provide services related to its three core offerings, namely, disaster recovery, data center replacement and data center extension. Existing vCloud Air customers stand to benefit from complementing their existing vCloud Air datacenters with OVH datacenters as well as OVH’s portfolio of private cloud and public cloud offerings, in addition to OVH’s enterprise-grade customer support. OVH’s acquisition of VMware vCloud Air marks the deepening of a long-standing partnership with VMware that includes a venerable history as a VMware vCloud® Air Network™ partner.

In the meantime, the acquisition of VMware vCloud Air, formerly owned by Dell-EMC, allows VMware to focus its cloud strategy on cross-cloud technologies as exemplified by its collaboration with AWS to deploy VMware Cloud on AWS. VMware will also continue to retain control of the VMware software-defined data center (SDDC) technology that is foundational to the vCloud Air business as it now focuses on cross-cloud technologies. The sale of VMware’s vCloud Air business to OVH allows vCloud Air to finally take flight and frees up VMware to focus on the next step of its cloud computing chapter as it relates to hybrid and multi-cloud technologies. With the vCloud air business out of the picture, expect to hear more about VMware’s updated strategy for carving out a more significant place in the cloud computing landscape in forthcoming months.

Cloud data backup and recovery startup Rubrik has announced the finalization of $180M in funding led by Institutional Venture Partners with additional participation from Lightspeed Venture Partners and Greylock Partners. Rubrik delivers backup and recovery software that runs on both on-premise IT infrastructures as well as public clouds such as Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure. Rubrik specializes in hybrid cloud backup and recovery software solutions that recognize the needs of customers to manage, automate and orchestrate backup and recovery deployments across on-premise and cloud-based platforms. The company competes directly with storage solutions offered by EMC and Veritas and already claims close to $100M in annualized revenue. Rubrik’s incipient success underscores the need for innovation in the storage space as it pertains to hybrid cloud environments and the concomitant value of a business solution that streamlines and simplifies backup and recovery processes for the enterprise. The $180M funding round brings the total funding raised by Rubrik to $292M and further gives it the mythical “unicorn” status accorded to startups valued at over $1 billion. With an extra $180M in the bank, expect Rubrik to ramp up its product development cycle and enhance its ability to compete with legacy solutions offered by competitors. Meanwhile, the larger backdrop to the story of Rubrik’s success is the need for disruption in enterprise storage and the potential of Rubrik’s product offerings to initiate a seismic shift in the consumption and management of storage for backup and recovery use cases.

Paycor has announced the availability of Workforce Insights, a platform that delivers workforce-related business intelligence to HR and Operational leaders about employees within an organization. Workforce Insights provides analytics into data related to topics such as overtime pay, turnover, contract labor and resource management. Customers can use Workforce Insights to understand discrepancies between scheduled and overtime pay per business unit as well as correlations between OSHA safety incidents and overtime as illustrated below:

Paycor’s Workforce Insights absolves customers of the challenge of extracting data from disparate platforms and subsequently cleansing, integrating and analyzing the resultant data to produce actionable insights. The platform’s interactive dashboards accelerate time to insight by delivering visually rich analytics that enable users to identify trends and root causes of people-related issues in small to mid-size businesses. Users have the ability to customize dashboards to enhance access to insights trends within the workforce that they manage. The platform delivers a treasure trove of analytics into people-related issues that facilitate more effective management of a workforce, with opportunities to segment analytics and focus on areas of the organization of interest. As such, Workforce Insights represents a powerful complement to HR data about salary and attrition because of its rich visualization capabilities and focus on actionable business intelligence for operational leaders.